Saturday, March 29, 2014

GO BINS.

Our society is a throw-away society. Clothing clots the second-hand
stores and everyone tends to wear an item once and toss it in the wash.
The idea of wearing a pair of jeans for three or more days is foreign to
young people. I not only wear my pants for a week, if they are clean,
but T-shirts two or three days as well. If I’m out and about, I change,
but to work around the house? It seems practical to me to do less
washing and wear my clothing until it gets dirty. It lasts longer and
doesn’t get washed to death. It saves water.
I’ve complained in this blog about truck loads of clothing and
useable items being dumped into the landfill by a second-hand store
manager. When I asked him why he doesn’t offer it to people for free, he
said to me: “You take care of your business and I’ll take care of
mine.”
The economy has changed considerably since then. I was pleased to
learn that Goodwill has put GO BINS in apartment complexes and other
public places for people to unload their unwanted clothing and useable
hard goods conveniently. And, in Calaveras County, where clothing was
dumped in the landfill, the county supervisors decided to approve the
idea of deposit boxes in shopping centers with the same intent in mind.
They used to have them, but they became messy as people rummaged through
things and tossed stuff all over the parking lot. I don’t know how they
intend to prevent that from happening. The Go Bins have a sensor telling when they are full. Here, I think they should do like
Telluride, Colorado, and put up a shelving unit marked FREE. Like a
bulletin board, people can bring or take things. What doesn’t get taken
can be removed to a second-hand store or shipped overseas to countries
that accept such goods. Waste is waste, and kids (and adults) might
catch on to the benefits of not wasting stuff. Why not start a local
factory producing rugs and quilts and insulation from unwanted fabric?
I’ve seen it done by volunteers all over the U.S. It can work here.